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    Canal Days
    Canal Days
    Canal Days
    Ebook337 pages7 hours

    Canal Days

    By Sean Monaghan

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Flis Kupe and Grae Sinder. Former interstellar soldiers. A great investigative team. Even in those moments of running for their lives. Running hard.
    Caught in a mystery that could bring down multi-planetary companies, Flis and Grae must dodge pirates and cops to find the truth.
    A truth that comes with a price.
    A Karnish River Navigations novel that takes you right back to the adventure of the canals.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTriple V Publishing
    Release dateNov 14, 2016
    ISBN9781370171224
    Canal Days
    Author

    Sean Monaghan

    Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

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      Book preview

      Canal Days - Sean Monaghan

      Canal Days

      A Karnish River Navigations Novel

      Copyright 2016 by Sean Monaghan

      All rights reserved

      Cover Art:

      © Elisanth | Dreamstime.com (figure)

      © Patrik Ružič | Dreamstime.com (background)

      Published by Triple V Publishing

      Author web page

      www.seanmonaghan.com

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

      This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

      This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

      Smashwords Edition.

      Contents

      Chapter one

      Chapter two

      Chapter three

      Chapter four

      Chapter five

      Chapter six

      Chapter seven

      Chapter eight

      Chapter nine

      Chapter ten

      Chapter eleven

      Chapter twelve

      Chapter thirteen

      Chapter fourteen

      Chapter fifteen

      Chapter sixteen

      Chapter seventeen

      Chapter eighteen

      Chapter nineteen

      Chapter twenty

      Chapter twenty one

      Chapter twenty two

      Chapter twenty three

      Chapter twenty four

      Chapter twenty five

      Chapter twenty six

      Chapter twenty seven

      Chapter twenty eight

      Chapter twenty nine

      Chapter thirty

      Chapter thirty one

      Chapter thirty two

      Chapter thirty three

      Chapter thirty four

      Chapter thirty five

      Chapter thirty six

      Chapter thirty seven

      Chapter thirty eight

      Acknowledgement

      About the author

      Other Books by Sean Monaghan

      Links

      Chapter One

      Flis Kupe squinted into bright sunlight from the flax hide. The bathroom-sized room smelled of damp grass and algae. The walls rustled. In part from their leafy construction, in part, she was sure, from the movement of insects building nests and scouring for edibles.

      It didn’t bother her too much. She didn’t expect to be staying long. If she did have to stay through the night, well, she’d slept in worse. Some of the foxholes on Cortesse she’d spent weeks sleeping in mud, surrounded by flies.

      The hide lay a hundred and fifty miles north of Turneith. Way out into canal country. Built probably fifty years ago, on an aluminum-carbon frame, with some wooden spars, the hide had once been used for bird-shooting.

      Someone was still using it. Even though hardly anyone lived out this way anymore, the freshness of the flax woven into the walls told Flis that repairs had been effected in the last few months.

      Looking through the narrow wall slot, Flis had a good view across the old farm lands. The fields here were perpetual. The grasses and crops continuing to grow long after abandonment. The soil so rigidly treated that anything but those specific crops struggled to take root.

      To her right, about five hundred meters off stood a copse of sycamore trees. They looked manky and disheveled. Like a cluster of drunks struggling home in the small hours.

      Overhead, puffy clouds gathered as if planning an afternoon rainstorm party. Some days the canal country could get pretty drenched. Especially at this time of year. Late autumn, the air cooling, Paulding’s sun rising later each morning.

      Flis had brought a simple lunch with her. A home-made hoagie with protein ham, fresh cilantro and lettuce from the little garden at the back of the new office. All delicious with a mustard spread.

      She was set through until the evening. If Colmar hadn’t shown by then she would head back in and try to think of a new strategy.

      Out in the fields a blue egret strode along. Ahead of the hide lay a wide wetlands. Part of the canal system. The hide stood on a small hillock, overlooking the reeds and lilies.

      The wetland stretched over four hundred meters from end to end, and two hundred meters at its widest. In the days since the best hunting, the reeds had taken over just about all the open water. A narrow stretch still sat in the middle. Flis had seen some coots come speeding in for a landing, like perfect skimming stones. Without any bouncing.

      She took a sip from her juice bottle. Passionapple. Some concoction Grae had recommended. He was the one who’d got them the job, but had somehow managed to be out on another job instead of taking on the stakeout.

      She put the bottle into her backpack. She’d packed light, but with enough in her equipment to stay out for the night if needed. The hide wasn’t set up for comfortable overnight accommodations really. Just a couple of benches and a set of hooks on one wall. Not even any power.

      She could spray a tent and the pack could convert itself to a sleeping bag. She hoped she didn’t have to stay. Those days of foxholes were far behind and best forgotten.

      In the grasses outside she’d hidden the motorcycle.

      A low-slung Breslin 860, with narrow tires and a thrust induction engine. The machine was smart enough to ride fast through overgrown fields. Its onboard systems could anticipate the path ahead and compensate for rough ground and bumps even she couldn’t see herself.

      The egret took to the air. It flew across into the reeds, fluttering in a hover for a moment before settling into the water to begin wading.

      The wetland lay close to the confluence of two old canals. A big set of locks stood less than half a kilometer away. Boats and barges would ply the east-west running Tergilee canal, sometimes turning north through the locks on the Sopwill canal. A series of three locks lifted the vessels over twenty meters onto a wide, flat section of Karnth. Hundreds of square kilometers, flattened and prepared hundreds of years ago. The Tergilee followed the base of the terrace, more or less.

      Of course times change. Hardly any boats traversed the waters now. Flis didn’t even know if the locks were still operational. All around Karnth, thousands had fallen into disrepair.

      From the distance she heard the sound of an aircraft. The intonation seemed like something propeller-driven.

      Perhaps this was it.

      The job was a simple one. Greerton-Wiriphi Industries suspected one of their executives of selling research to a competitor. GWI specialized in micro-rotor manufacture for vacuum pods. An essential part of numerous industries. Particularly space-faring.

      Particularly military.

      The loss of data was potentially catastrophic to the company. Not just from loss of proprietary information, but also from loss of trust as a contractor.

      Some of those contracts got pretty lucrative. There was fighting still going on out in the void. Disputed worlds. Unclear borders. Vague territories.

      At the very edges some of it was almost tribal in its intensity. Broken governments and lost constitutions.

      Flis was glad she’d left it all behind.

      The sound of the aircraft continued to increase in volume. It seemed to be coming from the north.

      Her tip suggested that Colby Colmar had been planning to charter transport to meet somewhere around this location. Sometime today.

      He wouldn’t dare exchange his data electronically. Too many tracks left behind.

      Flis knew about that. Any time you created a document or file, a dozen other systems knew about it. And it all keyed back to your identity.

      Whichever identity you were using at the time. It didn’t matter. Even people who tried to stay anonymous left a trail. It could always be tracked back to them.

      No one was anonymous.

      Chances were that Colmar had created flimsy copies of his data. And then he’d photographed that and printed it again.

      The hard copies would be blurred and coarse. But the information would be there. Ready for the receiver to transcribe. Ready for them to begin manufacture quickly. With some minor modification to skirt any infringement.

      Colmar didn’t know what he was in for.

      GWI wasn’t so much worried about the rotor. It would be redundant soon, probably. Superseded.

      What they didn’t like was an employee breaching their trust.

      The engine sound leapt in volume. Flis glimpsed the aircraft at the same moment. Sweeping in low across the lock structures.

      It was a small aircraft, as she’d imagined. White with red trim. A wide, flat wing, with a passenger and pilot pod left of center, and a long, tapering cylinder of engine fuselage to the right. A big propeller at the nose, a tiny tailplane at the cylinder’s narrow tip.

      Slung underneath was a single long pontoon.

      And then the plane was gone. Sweeping out of view.

      Flis set her juice down and went to the hide’s door. Pulling it just ajar, she watched. The aircraft swept across low and losing altitude. Its engine sound shifted. Dropping lower. Slowing.

      Flis tapped her rippletalk. The little handheld device contained everything she needed to reach the outside world.

      Unlike her half-working embedded arlchip, the rippletalk functioned perfectly. Somehow, though, the rippletalk was never as useful. Different functions, of course, but even with the damage, the arlchip gave her a measure of reassurance.

      Perhaps it was because of its fallibility. It felt more human. The rippletalk took everything literally. It clung on like a loyal dog.

      The rippletalk’s screen gave her location and data on the aircraft. A Beech Hopper 52. Waterplane. The pontoon could flip up against the fuselage for touchdowns on tarmac. A set of wheeled undercarriage could fold out.

      Versatile.

      And on water landings, a pair of smaller pontoons folded from the wings. One from each tip.

      Designed to be narrow enough to land on a stretch of canal. That was interesting.

      Across Karnth there were plenty of waterways. From wide rivers, to big lakes. Some artificial, most natural.

      But there was a vast canal system. All obsolete as times had changed and people had emigrated off Paulding and farther out into the stars fields.

      The aircraft banked to the right and lifted its nose. Flis thought it was leaving.

      The rippletalk had communicated with the aircraft’s automated systems, pulling up its transponder details. That gave the type and other data. But not the identity of the passengers.

      It could just as well be sightseers. Tourism wasn’t a huge industry, but there were numerous operators. The vast tracts of open lands crisscrossed by canals were as good a selling-point as any. Flis thought there were far more interesting abandoned parts of Paulding.

      What’s its flightplan? she asked the rippletalk.

      Not logged. Today it was using a butler voice. Very formal and stiff.

      How about that? she said.

      It detected me.

      What? That was not good. How? I thought you were just passively pulling its data.

      Correct. The aircraft is actively searching for electronic detection.

      Hmpf. Flis knew she should have thought of that. Should have kept the rippletalk shut off. So what about the make of plane and its flight characteristics? It was either going to land here or it wasn’t.

      Now, chances were it wasn’t. Which meant she’d just alerted her target and blown the job.

      Incoming call, the rippletalk said.

      Grae?

      Yes. Connect?

      Flis sighed. Now she would have to tell him about screwing up. They were new enough at this racket that they needed the work. And that work wasn’t too easy to come by.

      Maybe they should never have gotten involved with each other. As lovers or as business partners. Let alone both.

      Maybe that was the beginning of her errors of judgement.

      Still, he was sweet. A bit bristly at times, but smart enough that their business was making it. Mostly chasing philandering spouses and working small commercial investigations.

      This was the biggest job they’d landed. And GWI were paying. Two full bills already, just on progress made.

      Incoming call, the rippletalk said. Connect?

      She didn’t answer the device, just pressed its button to make the connection.

      Grae, she said. Looks like I–

      Flis. Listen. You’ve got someone coming in from the south. Speedboat on the canal.

      Okay. That’s what they’d been expecting, of course. Whoever was coming to receive Colmar’s information.

      Not who we we’d thought, Grae said. Those one’s are east of your position. Coming in cautiously.

      You’re tracking both? I thought you were working on the Edmonson thing?

      I’m on my way to you now.

      But what about–

      They’re tangled up. It’s Edmonson’s people in the speedboat.

      Oh.

      You need to get out of there. We can regroup and figure out our next step.

      Flis could hear another engine. Deeper than the aircraft’s. A big-engined boat, coming in from the south.

      Through the door, she caught glimpses of the vessel through the tall grasses. White, like the aircraft. Only a few hundred meters off.

      To her left the plane’s banking had shifted. Now it was swinging back toward her. Making a long, starboard turn.

      Projection? she asked the arlchip.

      Keep watching, the arlchip’s little voice responded.

      The chip was her old military enhancement. Set deep in her midbrain, with distributed networks through various parts of her cortex. The arlchip was like a supercharger for an engine. It used her senses to gather data and make precision assessments. It had control of her adrenal and other glands to give her assists when needed.

      At any time it could enhance her senses to produce better vision and hearing for her own judgement. Only fractional improvements, and only for short periods, but sometimes in battle that’s all that was needed.

      When she’d quit the military–furious–she’d attempted to have the chip burned out. Not knowing that it was so deeply seated. Not knowing that it was so widely distributed.

      Not knowing that it was capable of reconstituting itself.

      Almost.

      Now, its operation was sporadic and unreliable. But it still gave her an edge. Sometimes.

      The arlchip threw some data onto her retina. A projected track from the aircraft. Banking right around across her current position in the doorway to the hide.

      The track widened and grew fuzzy the farther from the plane it grew.

      Flis realized where the plane was heading. Right for the canal. Right astern of the boat.

      Chapter Two

      Flis? Grae said from the rippletalk.

      Flis pulled herself back from the hide’s door. The flaxwork walls rustled as she brushed against them.

      The noise from the speedboat’s engine overwhelmed the noise of the banking aircraft. Flis still hadn’t gotten a good look at the boat. It sounded big, but that might just be the engine.

      She wondered where it had come from. As far as she knew the Sopwill Canal didn’t intersect any other waterways for fifteen kilometers. And that was just a small service canal a couple of kilometers long, with no outlet.

      Flis? Grae said, more insistent.

      I’m here.

      You shouldn’t be. Not with what I’m looking at.

      Where are you?

      I’m up on the highland. About four klicks northwest of your position.

      Okay. I’m going.

      Flis stepped back into the hide to grab her bag. She stuffed the juice bottle inside. It clinked against the bag’s zip. She slung the bag over her shoulder. The straps spread out, grabbing her other shoulder. The bag stretched and molded to her back.

      As she stepped out she heard the sound from the boat suddenly diminish. The throttles pulled right back.

      Automatically Flis put her hand to her waist, feeling the thin butt of her pistol. A little Walther-X. Sixteen shots. Low caliber ammo, but very effective over a short distance. A useful negotiating weapon.

      The plane was still coming in. The boat had almost drawn level with her.

      The wetland was connected to the canal by a low weir. A small footbridge stretched across the weir, linking the corner beyond the wetland.

      When the canal was still, little water trickled over the lip. Now, with the wash from the boat’s bow wave, big surges splashed across. A covey of small black birds took flight from the reeds. Dozens of them. How could so many have hidden away in there?

      Flis moved quietly around the hide. She was exposed here now. The hide was designed to conceal hunters from birds, not investigators from boatloads of crooks.

      Assuming that’s what this was, a boatload of crooks.

      Flis had as little time for industrial and commercial espionage as she had for any other kind of criminal. Maybe less. Too many of these people could hide behind their company’s legal apparatus.

      She could see the boat more clearly now.

      It had an open cockpit, with the driver standing up at the wheel. The vessel had a long, covered bow. It looked like a single molded shell.

      It would have a big block engine mounted amidships to keep the center of gravity forward. Probably a couple of thousand horsepower. An induction jet. Very few moving parts, but a whole lot of power.

      With biological computer-controlled trim and plane balance. The kind of boat they could take out into the open ocean during a storm and still feel confident of making port.

      Flis moved around the side of the hide. Slowly. She didn’t want the driver to look over and spot her. She just needed to get on the motorcycle and make a getaway.

      If Grae said there was a problem, it was better to scarper and figure it out later. From the hide’s corner, she looked around at the boat again.

      It drifted along, coasting and shedding momentum.

      The aircraft continued coming in. Banking less. The arlchip’s tracking data on her retina blinked out, but she could now easily imagine the path herself.

      Definitely heading in to land right behind the boat.

      As the boat drifted by, Flis noticed someone else in the stern. Right at the back of the boat’s cockpit. Holding something.

      Grae? Flis said. What do you make of that?

      Just get out, he said.

      I’m going.

      She thought it looked like a weapon. A little shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

      The aircraft was less than a kilometer away. Flaring its flaps as it slowed for a landing.

      What do you make of this? Flis asked the arlchip. It had a database of weaponry. She just wanted confirmation.

      But the arlchip didn’t answer.

      Okay, she whispered. Time to go.

      As she moved, she heard a shout from the boat.

      Flis cursed. She dove for the motorcycle.

      Ordinarily she would set the machine to stand upright. Easier to jump on and depart quickly.

      But it would have been obvious, so she’d laid it down into a clump of longer grass near the hide.

      It meant she now had to pick it up before she could go.

      Hey! a shout came.

      She heard the boat’s engine again. Reversing.

      Coming to a quicker stop.

      Hold steady. Another voice. Female.

      The first voice had been male, she realized. The driver. Was that Edmonson?

      Flis needed to sit down with Grae and go over all of this. Figure out what was what and who was who.

      But with a rocket launcher in play, she needed to be not in the vicinity. Too much explaining if the cops showed up.

      There was still a chance they would have her on surveillance and ask some tricky questions. Better to just avoid all that. Even though it would be clear that she was leaving, the question would be why she was in the area anyway.

      It just slowed everything down.

      She and Grae needed to work on their relationship with the cops already. Local police departments weren’t that big on people stepping on their toes. Even if the cops’ investigation was already over.

      Flis? Grae said.

      I’m leaving. She’d reached the bike. She grabbed the handlebars and lifted. The motorcycle shifted its own center of gravity, adjusting the position of the engine. It made it easy to get the slim vehicle upright.

      Leave the bike. I’m reading a weapon-lock.

      On the bike?

      Grae didn’t have chance to reply.

      The hide exploded.

      Flis felt the blast’s heat. The overpressure hurled her forward.

      She came off the bike. Tumbled to the ground.

      Rolling. She flipped a couple of times. Smacked into a solid clump of grass.

      Flis! Grae’s voice yelped from the rippletalk.

      Okay, she whispered.

      She didn’t even have the rippletalk. It had been thrown from her.

      Her peripheral vision closed in. The world felt like it was moving at an angle. Sliding by her from top left to bottom right. Flis realized she was staring at the sky.

      Something nearby crackled. She could smell smoke.

      Rippletalk? she said.

      Here.

      Come. Flis rolled and looked for it.

      She needed to get out of here. The ground was disturbed. She saw some cracks. Looking up, she saw smoke drifting from the destroyed hide.

      To her right she saw the motorcycle. On its side again.

      The rippletalk was struggling to move toward her. It wasn’t designed as an independent robot really. It could move around a bit. Hang onto her shoulder when needed.

      Flis crawled a few steps and grabbed the rippletalk. She put it against her hip. The little device clung on.

      She could hear them shouting from the boat again. Arguing.

      Her ears rang too. She wondered if they were actually much closer.

      The aircraft was turning away now.

      Flis crawled back the other way.

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